A blog can help your company attract customers and showcase your expertise in the field, but launching a company blog without careful planning will only earn you a place in the long list of abandoned blogs that populate the Internet.
To ensure your blog has a long life full of relevant and interesting content, consider these four things before you start a company blog:
Photo by Matthew Simantov
1) Content
You need to decide now, before you launch your blog, what it will cover and how you will keep content fresh. Consider your focus. If it is too narrow, you may run out of topics to cover, but if it’s too broad the blog will have no clear audience and may struggle to hold onto readers over time.
Plan out posts for the first month or so. It is often a good idea not to launch until you have several posts already completed and scheduled to post. This ensures a smooth start with a steady stream of content. In addition, everyone working on the blog has some buffer time to get used to writing blogs and scheduling time for the blog work.
If you are worried about running out of ideas as your blogging continues, take a look at our guide for blog brainstorming.
2) Scheduling – content
The blog itself should stick to a regular schedule. This can mean posting at the same days and times every week, or just posting a certain number of times a week or month. Don’t let the schedule slip away – visitors to your site may consider a sporadic blog a sign of disorganization. A blog that hasn’t been updated in months or even years can send the message that your organization doesn’t follow through on projects it starts, or even create a mistaken impression that you are no longer in business. Plan ahead to avoid a blog that starts strong but fizzles out quickly.
3) Scheduling – work
Interesting and relevant posts aren’t going to write themselves. Who is going to write your company’s blog and when are they going to work on it? Who will be responsible for proofreading, uploading, approving and sharing posts once they are written?
Determine who will manage each part of the blogging process. Will blogging replace a former duty for any employee , or will it add to their workload? Will multiple employees write for the blog regularly or will it be run by one person? To avoid beginning an unsustainable practice or creating a blog that is always put off until tomorrow, consider now the time and effort that will need to go into a top-notch blog. Determine who will shoulder the responsibility, and how it will fit into their work schedule.
4) Streamline and organize
Standardize social sharing. Is the blogger responsible for pushing out new content to your company’s social networks, or does a separate social media manager do that? Make sure your content is shared and shared effectively. If no one reads your blog, it might as well be an unpublished manuscript sitting in a drawer.
Don’t repeat content. Eventually, you are going to forget what you’ve written, so begin a clear list now. You can also repurpose old content, once enough time has passed, by highlighting posts on a particular theme in a social media campaign. This will be much easier to implement if your posts are already organized by topic. They’ll also be easier for your readers to navigate.
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Make sure your blog conforms to basic grammar and usage, and publishes information in line with your messaging and brand stylebook.
